Siren: Blood Curse Preview

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We dare to tread through the first three episodes of Sony's reinvigorated survival horror series on PS3.

By Matt Wales

With Friday 13 mere days away and enough horror games out in the upcoming months to satiate even the most demanding masochist, now's the perfect opportunity to celebrate a genre that seemed close to rattling its last wheezing breath not 12 months ago. And what better place to start than with Siren? Previously known as Forbidden Siren in European territories, it was a series that simultaneously celebrated and eschewed nearly eight years of Japanese survival horror clichés and gameplay conventions.

Straight from the mind of Keiichirô Toyama, director of the original Silent Hill game – which, in itself, offered a seismic shift in our perceptions of survival horror, from high camp thrills and visceral shocks to something far more cerebral and psychologically unsettling – Siren gathered elements from practically every genre example before it and spun each disparate strand into something both instantly familiar yet almost unfathomably unique. Siren adopted Silent Hill's non-linear approach to storytelling (not to mention that all-pervasive fog and constant drone of air raid sirens), Clock Tower's cat-and-mouse survival ethic and Fatal Frame's fundamental fascination with traditional Japanese folklore. Rejecting the traditional model of direct engagement with enemies, instead focussing on observation and avoidance – vital thanks to overpowered, invincible enemies – Siren was an ambitious, fascinating if endlessly infuriating survival horror experience.

Textures might be wonky but the use of light and shadow is stunning.

An equally patience-stretching PS2 sequel later, Sony is set to reinvigorate the franchise on PS3 with Siren: Blood Curse. While the latter PS2 game delivered much of the same, Blood Curse offers some notable additions and alterations to the overall gameplay experience. This time around, Siren is hitting a PlayStation console in episodic format, and the new format has had a significant impact on some of the series' more testing aspects. We've given Blood Curse's first three episodes a thorough play-through and impressions are certainly positive, especially given past entries' innumerable flaws.

Structurally, Blood Curse offers a more linear experience than its forebears, eschewing an often incomprehensible fragmented narrative tree in favour of a more direct timeline. Each episode (which, from evidence, lasts around 30 minutes – disregarding the incredibly swift introductory episode 1) follows events in chronological order, although chapters still switch between different characters, tracking their actions as they run parallel to – and intersect - other stories. It's a subtle but sensible shift which serves to create a far more satisfying narrative – Blood Curse is instantly more accessible without losing any of the series' innate mystery and, perhaps more importantly, perfectly designed to function as episodic content. Fans who prefer putting some work into a plot (which we're not going to spoil even slightly here) shouldn't despair though – as before, Siren sports a vast item archive offering plenty of otherwise untouched back-story, filling in many gaps. It's more varied this time too, with video recording cross-referenced to listenable phone messages and personal letters linked to incomplete TV scripts.

Red skies and red rain: It's all unmistakably Siren.

As with Atari's upcoming Alone in the Dark, each episode begins with a recap of previous events and narrative threads culminating in a cliffhanger, followed by a quick 'Next time…' style teaser. It's an ideal approach and has the added advantage of breaking up what's always been a mentally exhausting gameplay style. As always in Siren, your main survival tool is your Sightjack ability, letting you tap into the minds of surrounding characters – whether friends or foes the Shibitos – in order to witness events through their eyes. In practice this means progressing through levels until you're alerted to enemies in your vicinity (either by an audible heartbeat or vibrating pad if you're lucky enough to own a DualShock 3) then scanning the area to track them down.

Sightjack has undergone a few refinements this time around and works infinitely better as a result. There's less focus on the somewhat painstaking Sightjack 'tuning' in Blood Curse – it's now possible to easily scan and switch between all nearby jackable creatures using the shoulder buttons – and Siren's previous stop-start gameplay feels much smoother as a result. Most significantly, Sightjack now employs a splitscreen viewpoint – once you've located the Shibito you want to track, you can lock onto them – and the action plays out with your character's over-the-shoulder viewpoint running alongside the Sightjacked Shibito's first-person perspective. Stand still and the Shibito's viewpoint fills more of the screen, start moving and your view will dominate. It's a subtle upgrade but makes the world of difference in terms of gameplay – you're now able to react in real-time to a Shibito's movements, adjusting your position and rethinking your strategies on-the-fly. It radically ups previous games' exhaustingly pedestrian pace and alleviates much of their infuriating trial and error gameplay – it's now much harder to stray into the path of an unseen foe and, if you do, it's easier to react to their advances.